StoryCorps

StoryCorps were recently in Salt Lake. Eric called to tell me they were accepting reservations that were expected to go fast, so my Dad and I followed the steps shown in the photo above and I interviewed my Dad for StoryCorps. They're adding his story to the Library of Congress. The idea to interview my Dad for StoryCorps started after my dad and I combined efforts to tell his life story as a movie last winter. We gave the DVD "A Life Launched" to our family for Christmas. Making the movie gave me a different understanding of my dad and I wanted to share this with other people too.

During the interview he shared his firework story in which he saw his first chain reaction. When burning firework wicks in an ashtray in his bedroom a spark flew out and landed in the box that held the rest of the fireworks and BOOM! He and his sister had run for it and the story ends with him watching the firemen from the yard below, standing in the midst of all the other neighborhood kids, and watching the firemen throw his Sunday suit out the window. He talked about a sailboat race that led him under the Golden Gate bridge, his career as an aeronautical engineer (aka rocket scientist) and some of the projects he worked on like the Polaris missiles. He talked about being a "human computer" during his college days spending hours on calculations and a few decades later watching the computer spit out the same type of results (from rocket motor tests) in real time. He talked about loosing his first child to Leukemia and being an "aero bracero" and moving where the jobs went.

This was only a 40 minute interview, but I'm glad some of his story (at least to this point) has been saved.

Suz